Microsoft 365 Word For Professionals For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Chapter 24

Ten Ways to Customize Word

Customizing Word can be a blessing or a curse. The blessing part deals with changing the program’s behavior and appearance to match what you prefer. The curse comes from a departure from the traditional and well-documented ways that Word looks and acts. As long as you can keep in mind that your custom settings will make your copy of Word different, you’re good to go.

Changes to Word’s options and all customization settings are saved as part of the Normal template. Other changes may be saved elsewhere, depending on what you’re modifying.

Showing Special Characters

Word hides some special characters in a document, items that you don’t see but which affect your text. For example, when you press the Enter key to start a new paragraph, you add a New Paragraph character to the text. It doesn’t show up — unless you tell Word to show it.

All the secret characters appear when you use the Show/Hide command. But if you find that the command summons too many characters and you just want to see a few — such as the tab or Enter key press — you can select individual characters to appear all the time. Follow these steps:

1. Click the File tab and choose Options.

   The Word Options dialog box appears.

2. Choose the Display category.

   The list of special characters ...